Mssv

My induction to boardgaming began early in 2004, when I started playing The Settlers of Catan. I’d played plenty of other traditional ‘boardgames’ before that point, such as Monopoly or Risk or the Game of Life, but after Settlers, I quickly realised that these weren’t real boardgames - they were ‘boardgames lite’. They were ‘roll […]

Like pirates, zombies are reaching the peak of their popularity. They’re cool. They’re in movies, books, videogames, boardgames and MMOGs. I’ve only played two MMOGs seriously; the first was about seven years ago, when I beta-tested Ultima Online (yeah, I’m that cool). The second is Urban Dead, a browser-based text MMOG that sees zombies and […]

Prepare for a special holiday bumper set of posts in the next few days! I’ve spent the last week or so getting up late, reading books and watching a lot of TV, which surprisingly has given me the time to think about a lot of interesting things, such as Sky Movies, zombie language, boardgames, the […]

Why a fatty diet leads to diabetes - type 2 diabetes, specifically. This article at the Times is a surprisingly detailed report of how researchers at UCSD determined that hyperglycaemia suppresses the GnT-4a enzyme, which is basically a blood glucose sensor for the cells that produce insulin. Too much suppression results in pancreatic […]

Doctor Who Season 2 End Theme (mp3) - impressed by the new orchestral end theme of Doctor Who? Annoyed by the stupid BBC voiceover getting in the way? Your worries are over…

Games for couples (other than the obvious) - another Ask Metafilter classic about good, non-confrontational two-player boardgames and card games. Most modern boardgames are for about four players…

After hearing so much about Train Your Brain, the Nintendo DS game that’s been developed to boost your IQ, I was pretty excited on obtaining a copy. The game has probably sold more than a million copies now, and that’s mostly to non-gamers, so it’s certainly an unusual hit ‘game’. Players are supposed to play […]

All hail the Alternate Reality Games (ARG) Special Interest Group (SIG) of the Independent Game Developers Association (IGDA)! Yes, that’s the ARG SIG of IGDA. I’m happy to be a founding member, and I’m even happier to not be involved in the running of the SIG, given my vanishingly small amounts of free time. However, […]

The idea of Patrick Stewart doing a one-man production of A Christmas Carol was a surprising one, but also one that I felt knew what was going to happen. I presumed that he’d read the book out on his own, using his unmistakable voice to enliven proceedings; nothing terribly difficult, and not terribly interesting, apart […]

A few weeks ago, Stuart from feeling listless emailed to ask if I’d like to contribute to a ‘2005 in Review’ thing he was doing at his blog. The idea was that contributors would write about:
“…something they’ve always wanted to do this year. It could be as simple as being able to see a film, […]